


Noun

by fadewords



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Agender Character, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Outsider's Perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noun lived in a house at the edge of the wood.</p><p>Well. It wasn’t really a house—it was a wooden box, painted a peculiar, faded sort of blue-gray—and they weren’t really called Noun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noun

Noun lived in a house at the edge of the wood.

Well. It wasn’t really a house—it was a wooden box, painted a peculiar, faded sort of blue-gray—and they weren’t really called Noun.

That was just a nickname—a joke—or at least that was how it had started…

People had gone up to the box-house, knocked on the door, spoken to Noun—back in the days when Noun still spoke. And Noun had told them stories—endless, fantastic stories, of places and people beyond imagining.

Sometimes people told them stories in return, but mostly they listened. They loved to listen to Noun, loved to hear them speak, loved the fond, faraway look in their eyes when they spoke— _loved them_ , point-blank.

They called them Grandfather at first, for they were like a grandfather to everyone—but when they heard the name, a pained expression fell over their face, and they asked them not to.

So people began to call them the Storyteller—capital S. For a long time they only smiled at the name—a soft, pleasant, grandfatherly smile, all teeth and beard and wrinkles—but then they began to look sad when they heard it, and asked everyone to stop,  _please_.

When asked why, they only said that they had known someone—a dear friend—who had also gone by the name, and they had recently passed away.

People wondered what they ought to call them.

A little girl suggested “Doctor” after they bandaged her knee—and their hands froze on top of the bandage for the barest second, and trembled, frightening her. They noticed, and smiled warmly—though without the usual teeth—and told her that they were not a doctor, though they had played at being one long ago.

Frustrated, the little girl asked what she ought to call them.

They replied, “Nothing.”

She insisted that she had to call them  _something_ , and asked them who they were.

They replied, “No one.”

—And thus the joke began. It was just between the two of them at first—the girl referred to them as “No One” and they smiled faintly when they heard—but then her friends joined in, and so did the other children, and their parents.

Soon everyone knew them as “No One,” and called them as such. They never objected.

Over time people began dropping the “w,” calling them “No’un.”

Over time, they stopped coming out to talk as much, and told fewer stories.

People asked them why, and they replied that sometimes it was hard to get out of bed—but upon seeing their stricken faces, they added that it wasn’t worth worrying about—they were just growing old.

But people worried anyway, for they loved them.

When they knocked on the doors and No’un didn’t answer, they waited outside for ages before giving up and going home.

Over time, they waited less and less—and over time they stopped waiting.

People wrote about them, though—recorded the stories they’d told, and the things they’d said, and the way they’d looked and spoken.

Over time, they stopped putting the apostrophe down in their writings—spelled their name “Noun”—and small children began pronouncing in it as such.

They did not object, and so it stuck.

Years passed. Noun left their box only every few.

On those occasions, they always looked older, more tired. They spoke slowly, and often with their eyes closed.

Most days, each word seemed to stab them like a knife to the gut—and by the end of a story, they seemed either numb or mortally wounded.

But some days—oh, but some days—the words came easily, and their eyes were light, and their shoulders unslumped. Some days, they were quick of tongue and light of foot. Some days, they seemed lit from within. Some days they were exactly as the elders had described them.

But other days…other days words came  _too_  easily, too quickly, and they seemed unable to stop them. They rambled—raved, sometimes—even  _shouted_ —terrible, terrible things, in languages unintelligible to their ears, and rose from their chair lightning fast to tower over everyone.

These were the days the parents dragged their children away, hurried them back home—because children were no longer allowed to visit them alone—were forbidden to, in fact.

And the children that protested, that looked on behind, saw them stop, saw them shrink back in on themself, no longer tall and towering, but short and stunted, hollow, and saw them sink back into their chair.

Time passed. Noun came out less and less—and when they did, they were quiet, and often spoke with their eyes closed—or loud, raging, fiery, with their eyes so wide it looked like they might fall out of their head.

The good days did not come anymore.

Their clothes had been dirty for as long as anyone could remember, but now they were frequently stained an odd shade of red-orange—and sometimes blood-red.

People stopped coming to visit.

A few brave children ventured toward the little house every so often, curious about the old one who lived there, but they never knocked—and when they dared each other to, they got no answer.

Then the children stopped coming—even on dares.

People forgot their face—they had only old drawings of it. (Noun had insisted  _no pictures_ —the light bothered their eyes, they’d said.)

People forgot their love for them—forgot that they had once called them Grandfather, Storyteller, and No One with wide smiles on their faces

They feared them.

They invented new names to replace the old, and to go along with the only one they remembered—Noun—which was no longer a joke. They called them “thing,” and “it,” and “monster,” and sometimes “undying”—for they had been there, so far as the records showed, for almost a century, and had hardly aged.

Noun came out at night, stared unblinking into the darkness for hours, only going inside when the stars began to fade. The people watched them watch the dark, arms around each other, afraid.

And in the mornings, sometimes the box-house was not there. It had always moved around overnight—children had always made a game of searching for it early in the morning—but some mornings it was nowhere to be found.

On those mornings, some people breathed easier. And on those mornings, some people dared not breathe.

 _They’ll hurt us_ , people cried.  _They’ll appear in the middle of town and—_

But they never did.

On one such morning, the sky was bright and clear, and everyone was busy, moving, moving, moving—

—And then they stopped. Everyone. Everything. Stopped halted stood still

and then

Started again. And stopped and started and stopped and started and started again before it stopped and vice versa and—

No one breathed.

That was fine, though. No one existed.

But then they did, and—didn’t and did and didn’t and did and didn’t and—

Everything shifted—was on fire, was frozen, was solid, was liquid, had mass and didn’t.

People bent—and broke—and their pieces bent.

The planet flashed in and out of existence.

And then the box-house came back, and Noun stepped out, and stopped. Then they went straight back in and left.

Centuries passed. Millennia. The planet did not recover. The people did not survive. The box-house did not return.

And then, one day, it did.

Its occupant stepped out and stared at the world before them. They did not speak, or move, or breathe—only stared at the devastation, the flames that danced in the atmosphere, and the shadows that flickered in and out of existence, and the smoke that rose thick and dark from the many rents in the earth.

They stood still as the ground trembled, as the wind shrieked, as the planet itself wheezed, clinging to reality—

—And then they looked at the people, trapped in nonbeing, and stood taller, firmer.

Their eyes flashed, then went cold. Their face grew hard. And then, quietly, they spoke.

"No more."

They slipped back inside their box-house. It disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> I got bored, wanted to come up with some sad headcanons--went overboard, and this was the result. Might do a companion piece from the War Doc's POV...dunno yet.


End file.
